Shooting STARS

You know those obnoxious little subscription cards blown into magazines that always fall out and annoy the heck out of you when you're trying to look through a magazine in a store? Do you bend over and pick them up or do you leave them on the floor? Don't worry, I'm not going to judge you one way or the other. More than once I've taken my foot and slid them under a counter just to get them out of the way so someone doesn't slip on the blasted things.

What you see below are insert cards I actually saved. These were in the American Film Institute magazine. I'm not sure if it was late 70s or early 80s, but I have a small stack with 20 different photos. Can you name the stars and the films? Give it a try and let me know. They're all pretty easy.

Classic images of POSSIBLE GLUTTONY

Yup, we're heading into the season. The season of eating. American's do it very well. We eat and we eat a lot. Images of food are everywhere now. Images of American's getting bigger only to complain about it in January. Which brings me to a little something that actually has very little to do with this, but it's been driving me nuts for a few years. Can you guess? I doubt it. Nobody is going to see this one coming.

Jane Seymour. Jane Seymour jewelry designer. Now I have nothing against the woman. Saw her in person a very long time ago and she was lovely, but her jewelry.... Each time there is some sort of jewelry buying holiday around the corner Kay's Jeweler hauls out Jane's necklace. She calls it the "open heart collection." Okay, not so sure. Seriously take a look at it next time it's on. Don't just DVR past it. Pause on that necklace and tell me if that isn't the backside silhouette of a naked big bottomed woman? Small top, large bottom. That's all I'm sayin'. If you want to give your significant other a necklace that looks like you're saying "Hey, love your big bottom" okie dokie by me. But don't tell me it's open hearts. It's a rorschach test and I see a big bottomed woman. Which brings me back to where I started...food. 

For your viewing pleasure I give you food. Food in vintage postcards, early 20th century. Yeah, I know, two of them are wild turkeys, but that is still food during the next month. The rest of the year I don't need to worry about my lovely flock outside roaming through the orchard. But for the next month every single time I hear a gunshot I worry they took one of my babes. 

So enjoy Thanksgiving to all who are celebrating. I'll be away with family. Eat slow, chew well, swallow, and repeat. Then find a big chair and fall asleep. It's a holiday. That's what we do.

Catch you on the flipside. And keep your hands off my wild turkey!

Oh, and if you start seeing a turkey staring back at you in your spoon you know you've eaten too much or someone forgot to bake the thing at the right temperature. And now, according to "A Christmas Story" you're going to get worms.

Fred Harvey, the Grand Canyon, and NATIVE AMERICANS

Here's one of those postcard booklets with the flip-down-two-sided cards. This one was part of the collection Fred Harvey sold. As usual, the illustrator is not given any credit. I love the front cover of the Hopi Pueblo and the back of the Navajo sheepherder in Monument Valley. Both really lovely illustrations in Southwestern colors. Each would make a really nice framed print. I wonder if these paintings even exist anymore? As you'll notice on the Navajo one there is the slit where the flap is to slip in to enclose the card booklet.

Click on image to see it larger.

The shot of the Grand Canyon is also quite interesting. A black and white shot that had color tinting applied, most likely as overlays on the mechanical, it gives the Canyon a sort of candy colored rainbow look.

This dates most likely to the mid-to-late 1940s.

Lodges in the NATIONAL PARKS

The old lodges in National Parks are usually pretty wonderful places. My favorite is still the one at Glacier. The old wood, the stone hearth at the fireplaces, the textures, and smells. You're always stepping back to a nicer time when you step inside. They're part of the history of the parks. Unfortunately most of the items I turned over in the gift shops had "Made in China" stamped on the bottom. I'd pick up something that looked Native American and there was that blasted little gold sticker with "China" on it. Really bugged me.

Below are a few old postcards showing the lodges at Bryce Canyon in Utah, Old Faithful in Yellowstone, Zion National Park in Utah, and Mount Rainier in Washington. I look at the one of Zion and can remember my father and me having lunch on the balcony porch a few years after my mother's passing. The parks always bring back good memories.

Click on image to see it larger.

And this copy is from the back of the Bryce Canyon card. The same copy is on the back of the Zion card below.

"Lodge Center, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, provides accommodations for guests housed in adjacent guest lodges. The lodge center contains hospitable lobby and lounge, attractive and commodious entertainment hall, spacious dining room, curio store, barber shop, and retiring rooms and shower bath for men and women." 

And from the Yellowstone card:

"Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone Park. Without this wonderful architectural creation how lame and lacking in completeness the Upper Geyser Basin would be. Words are almost useless in word-picturing this Inn--one must surely see and ramble about it and eat and sleep in it to know it. Go and do this and be happy!"

Click on image to see it larger.

And from the back of the Rainier card:

"Steam shovels have just dug channels through ten to twelve feet of snow to allow automobiles to reach Paradise Inn, Rainier National Park. The highway is usually open for traffic by July 1st."

Hopefully some of these will bring back memories to those who remember visiting parks as children on family vacations when the world seemed a little less scary and maybe even a little bigger.

America's NATIONAL PARKS

These cards are not old. I purchased them while on vacation in Wyoming in 2006. What they are are reproductions of 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA) posters done for the National Parks. To quote the back of the cards:

Between 1935 and 1943 the WPA's Federal Art Project printed over two million posters in 35,000 different designs to stir the public's imagination for education, theater, health, safety, and travel. Due to their fragile nature only two thousand posters have survived.

This is a nice example of ephemera being reissued/repurposed to our current times. To see more from the company that produced these click on the following link:  Ranger Doug's Enterprises.  I have nothing to do with this company, but I do think I'd like to purchase a few more cards and a poster to frame. Looking at the list of National Parks posters I'm happy to see I've been to all but 5 of the parks. I do love the National Parks, and I especially love the old lodges. We're very lucky to have these places. For me nothing can match standing at the base of a Sequoia tree looking towards the heavens. Nothing man-made can ever match it.

(a) circa 1939, artist unknown

(b) artists: Doug Leen and Mike Dupille

(c) circa 1939, artist unknown

To see the other cards in this collection and purchase the set click here.